Pork Pork, Pork! A bill like this is a travesty.
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Energy Bill Add-Ons Make It Hard to Say No
Help for Minnesota Power Plant Sways Senator Despite Concerns on ANWR
By Dan Morgan and Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A10
Since he took office in January, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has been among the few GOP senators to oppose oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But as House and Senate negotiators try to wrap up all-inclusive energy legislation that may open the refuge to exploration for the first time, Coleman says he now would be hard-pressed to vote against it. One reason is that the energy measure suddenly includes a windfall for Coleman's home state, an example of the backroom bargaining and logrolling that has taken precedence over the higher goals of achieving cleaner fuels, more reliable power and energy security.
Several weeks ago, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chief Senate negotiator on the energy bill, inserted an obscure provision that in fact will provide as much as $800 million in federal loan guarantees to build a power plant in one of Minnesota's most economically depressed regions. Now, Coleman said, he hopes the bill will also take care of two other priorities: tax credits for bio-diesel fuel made from Minnesota soybeans; and a requirement that gasoline refiners use more corn-based ethanol.
If all that is in the omnibus legislation, he said, "It would be very hard to walk away from an energy bill, no matter what else was in it," including the go-ahead for Arctic drilling.
As Republicans push for a final House-Senate agreement within days, such 11th-hour maneuvering indicates the extent to which lawmakers in both parties can exact a price for their support in the form of local projects, tax breaks for targeted businesses and favors for dozens of special interests. Some fear the result could be more a hodgepodge of special provisions than a coherent energy policy.
The agreement being hammered out would cover a vast array of energy issues, from nuclear power research to policy on offshore oil drilling. But once it is approved by House-Senate negotiators, there will be no chance to amend or strike individual riders, earmarks or provisions because such agreements cannot be amended on the floor under congressional rules.
To lure votes for the final bill in the closely divided Senate, Domenici's staff has compiled a one-page, single-spaced list of projects and provisions that fellow senators want. "There's a lot of effort to count votes," said Alex Flint, staff director of the Senate Energy Committee, which Domenici chairs.
House-Senate negotiators are considering about $18 billion in new tax breaks for utilities, major oil companies, pipeline operators, railroads and others.
A draft of the legislation released last week tacked on a $1.1 billion subsidy for an experimental nuclear power plant in Idaho. Negotiators also agreed to help a troubled coal plant in Alaska and spur development of a West Virginia power project, both tailored to appeal to lawmakers from those states..
Negotiators also are likely to bow to the will of the powerful, three-member Alaska congressional delegation and write in federal subsidies for a $20 billion pipeline carrying natural gas across the state and eventually to U.S. consumers.
The subsidies are opposed by a group of investors led by Texas energy magnate Forrest Hoglund, who has contributed more than $150,000 to the Republican Party since 1999.
Hoglund's plan proposes an alternative pipeline route through Canada's Mackenzie Valley. Indirectly, the White House has hinted that it favors keeping that as an option and letting "market forces," not Congress, decide the route.
But major oil companies with drilling interests in Alaska's North Slope are putting their muscle behind the Alaskan lawmakers.
James J. Mulva, president and chief executive of ConocoPhillips Co., one of the Alaska pipeline's three primary backers, has been seen recently on the third floor of the Dirksen Building, where the Senate Energy Committee is housed.
For Domenici and Rep. W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chief House negotiator, winning over enough members to ensure adequate support for the complex bill is proving to be a tricky balancing act.
That was apparent last week when progress was stalled by issues crucial to opposing groups of members representing Midwest corn states and Gulf Coast oil refiners.
The top priority for the corn growers -- whose allies include Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) -- is a major new mandate in the energy legislation requiring the gasoline industry to more than double its use of corn-based ethanol.
Ethanol, already heavily subsidized by the federal government, is one product that can be added to fuels to reduce smog in communities with heavy air pollution.
But Gulf Coast gasoline refiners, concerned that ethanol will displace increasing volumes of their products, support phasing in the ethanol requirements more slowly. In the past week, the ethanol lobby has stepped up pressure for even faster phase-in, angering some House members.
Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is insisting that Senate negotiators give up an important part of their ethanol plan, which phases out production of MBTE, a competing additive refined mainly in Texas and the Gulf Coast.
Daschle has made clear he will attempt to block a final vote on the overall energy bill unless it contains ethanol provisions to his satisfaction. GOP leaders hope to resolve the matter at a meeting this week.
Dozens of lawmakers are also clamoring for provisions that would benefit various sectors of the electricity industry. For example, southern lawmakers with close ties to Southern Co. and Entergy Corp., two huge public utility holding companies that provide power to customers from South Carolina to Louisiana, are playing a major role in shaping final agreement.
An amendment pushed by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) takes the side of the southern utilities in insisting that outside companies that install power generators in the utilities' territory should pay all costs of hookups and related transmission expenses unless the project is needed to ensure the system's reliability.
Opponents say the amendment would defeat efforts by federal regulators to open the grid to more power shipments and create more competition among generators.
A key section was written by Bruce Edelston, a policy executive with the Southern Co. in Atlanta, on behalf of his company and Entergy, based in New Orleans. "People on [Capitol] Hill asked our lobbyist what changes we wanted to make to the bill," Edelston explained. "We're not the only ones."
Another amendment pushed by Entergy would reverse a decision of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which ordered Entergy to split costs of connecting a competitor's new generating plant to Entergy's grid.
The Entergy forces are led by former FERC chairman Curt L. Hebert, but they have a well-connected opponent in Washington lobbyist J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat who formerly chaired the Senate Energy Committee.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders have been doing what they can for home-state interests of pivotal lawmakers.
The loan guarantees for the Minnesota power plant were added to a section of the bill on "clean power initiatives" agreed to by Domenici and Tauzin more than a week ago. Without mentioning Minnesota, the provision specified a "plant using integrated gasification combined cycle technology located in a taconite-producing region of the United States."
The plant is to utilize a clean-burning technology for making electricity from coal. It will be built on the site of an abandoned steel plant at Hoyt Lakes.
Coleman said he recalls only a brief conversation with Domenici in which he asked the Energy Committee chairman to "take a look at the project." A Domenici spokesperson said the senator added it as a "courtesy" because Senate debate on the energy bill ended before Coleman could offer his amendment.
Coleman described the added provision as "a classic win, win, win -- good for the environment, and it will put people to work."
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